How should I win in the endgame

[gsfgf]

I have been reading the war academy articles and they have really helped my early game strategy, but I still don't really know how to go from a reasonably successful civ to actually getting a victory condition.

I have a save that might be a good place to start for a thread that will be useful to a lot of people. It is late (~1900AD), I am in second, so I can't just hang out and get a score victory, but my civilization is pretty good (at least by my standards). I have used a lot of the War Academy tips to build this civilization, but I am completely lost as to what victory condition I should go for for several reasons. First, I can't quite get domination by just eliminating my only remaining enemy. So I either need to take on one of my powerful friends plus my enemy or go peaceful. I have no idea what victory condition to go for. Hopefully some of you experienced players can give some advice.

I'm going to post this with my save and then switch to my laptop to give y'all the important details of the game so you don't have to actually load my save to figure out what is going on.

Here are the game details:
Difficulty: Noble
Map: Small Fractal (4 continents)
Leader: Frederick (philosophical, cultural)
AI: Hatty - Defensive Pact
Elizabeth - Pleased, only source of coal, rivals with Hatty
Monty - Furious, My worst enemy, kinda weak
Kublai - Dead
Religion - State: Confucianism, Taoism, Judaism, Christian Holy Cities
Year - 1910AD
All my cities are on one continent. Eli has a tiny city in my tundra, but otherwise it's all mine. All other civs are on their own continents as well

My Cities and major buildings - most everything has usual suspects too:
Berlin(14) - Capitol, Science, 3 Super Priests, Oracle, Academy, Oxford, Confucian Academy, et cetera.
Hamburg(16) - GPP Farm(87/turn), Confucian Holy City w/ Shrine, 6 Priest, Angkor Wat, Globe, N'atl Epic, Academy, Taoist Pagoda, Lots of religious buildings
Munich(12) - Hybrid, Taoist HC w/ Shrine, Confucian Academy, Jewish Synagogue, Academy
Cologne(12) - Production, Ironworks in progress
Karakorum(13) - Kublai's Capitol, Decent GPP(26/turn), Great Library, Pyramids, Jewish Synagogue
Beshbalik(11) - Christian and Jewish HC w/ Shrines
Ning-hsia(10) - Island, 2 Scientist

Technology:
Can research Monotheism, Military Tradition, Constitution(in progress), Physics, Medicine, Horseback Riding (I know that's a weird set, I just skipped horses and mono. Hopefully this indicates where I am)

Military:
My Army - old stuff that would need upgrades: 30 total, mostly Macemen, Axemen, Catapults, and Elephants.
Hatty - Has machine guns and Infantry
Eli - also has Infantry
Monty - Unknown

I am not sure if a D pact is a good thing, but Hatty asked for it and I said yes. I don't have the army to challenge her.
My land + Monty's land is not enough for a domination victory.
Can I get Hatty and Eli to vote for me when someone builds the UN?
Is a diplomatic victory even fun?
What victory condition should I do?
Can I even get cultural victory (10k, 12K, 5K)?

Thanks for any advice y'all have!

 

[johncross21]

The obvious one here is time victory which is pretty boring but respectable

However Hap has a lead and may be difficult to catch

I suggest a couple of tweaks that will boost your economy
- build a city in the north between the pigs and the winery (it will overlap one tile with hamburg but thats a price worth paying)
- build granaries to grow your population quicker
- delete your warriors (unpromoted warriors just waste money)


My preference is for warmongering

You are right that you can't win just by beating Monte. The issue for me would be can you win without more land. Land means points , commerce and beakers.

A realistic war goal is to beeline assembly line - build infanty - upgrade your cats and take warwick. That gives you another city which will add to score and produce something useful in terms of points before the end

At this stage in the game its too late to wage full war against Monte because he will churn out units like a sausage factory. However, you do need to build up your defences because he is climbing the powergraph and you have largely inexperienced troops. Even if you managed a beach head assault its too late to make captured cities very productive. Make sure your navy does not become obsolete in the next few turns

Another option is to make war against Hap. It might slow her down sufficiently to make an easy win. Build up an attack/defence force and if you fall behind too far raze a couple of her cities in the end game. I don't know however how to cancel a defensive pact

 

[Quechua]

You are pretty well set up for a diplo win. Sign a defensive pact with Elizabeth. Her negative modifier for your other defense pact will go away and she'll be at friendly. Get to mass media first and you have an easy win.

(And why are you building a Confucian Academy and Hermitage?)

Edit:
Arrgh, it's late/early and I wasn't thinking. If you build the UN, Hatty will be your rival. But if you take over Monte's land, and make an effort to grow your population you could still win it with one ally, and I think it's the quickest way.